Season's Trickings

It's fitting that Halloween comes so close to elections.

Sure, it must have been haints: that would explain why 40,000 voter registration forms vanished so thoroughly, Georgia's Secretary of State (R) couldn't find 'em. Charles Pierce, on that and other tricks—past, present, and always under improvement for the future.

Earlier in the month, Pierce wrote of the Supreme Court majority—

... One of the things it really wants to do is open the political system to the new Gilded Age of corporate oligarchy. One of the other things they really want to do is block off any avenue of political resistance to that goal, particularly at the ballot box. They really are dedicated to restricting the franchise as much as they can, and to allowing the states to do whatever they want in furtherance of that purpose. I was in the courtroom when the case of Shelby County v. Holder was argued, and when Antonin Scalia said voting was a "privilege," and John Roberts himself declared that the Day Of Jubilee had come, and race was no longer a factor. The longer in time I get away from that morning, the more absurd those arguments seem. But they prevailed, and the majority that supported them meant business. It gutted the Voting Rights Act, and it has strongly resisted any attempt either to bring the VRA back, or any attempt to work around their ruling in the Shelby County case.

Yesterday, that majority essentially endorsed the most restrictive voter-suppression act passed since the (alleged) demise of the poll-tax. Back in July of 2013, the legislature of the newly insane state of North Carolina passed a law that essentially demolished every attempt to extend the franchise. It was this law that fired up the Moral Monday movement, and brought to prominence the Reverend William Barber, who saw the snake-line getting ever higher and more inaccessible. Over this past summer, the fight against the law went into the courts, and the people opposed to the law won an important partial victory when the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated both same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting, two of the most important restrictions provided for in the law. Then, Wednesday night, without comment, the Nine Wise Souls issued a stay of the Fourth Circuit's order, thereby reinstating the restrictions that the circuit court had overturned....

Just in time to restrict NC voting access in this election, and to reward this effort by presumably sending him to the Senate.

The Court's decision is a routine day's work in the long game. Endorsed by bi-partisan consensus, with only Justices Ginsberg and Sotomayor dissenting.

Pierce—

There is a long, blue river of sadness running through the words of that dissent. It runs under the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama. It pools into a lagoon of sadness behind an earthen dam in Mississippi. The survivors of the generation that fought and bled for the right to vote are getting old and dying off right now. John Lewis is 74. Soon, there won't be any of them left. But it always was thought that the victories they won would survive them. That the real monument to their cause would be lines of the historically disenfranchised suddenly empowered, swamping the system, and realizing that elections in this country are meant to be the most powerful form of civil disobedience there is. And now, it looks very much as though powerful interests are in combination to make sure their victories die with them, here as we celebrate John Roberts's Day of Jubilee. There is a long blue river of sadness running through those words, and a darkness spreading across its surface, and a long night is falling on the face of the water.

Podium For Panic

Nurse returning from Liberia, essentially kidnapped at the airport, but manages to get the story out. At that Dallas News link, readers pretty much want to burn her as a witch.

Along with the medically inappropriate actions against Kaci Hickox, there are more opportunities for politicians to grandstand—

...In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican, issued a stern warning on Thursday to medical experts coming to an international conference on tropical diseases that they should stay away if they had been in Ebola-affected countries in the past 21 days, and that those who defied would be confined to their hotel rooms.
...

Dr. Alan J. Magill, the president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, said the move by Louisiana to block doctors who had treated Ebola patients from its conference this weekend would harm crucial sessions where scientists, doctors and administrators who had been in the region were going to teach others.

So far, 10 to 15 participants had scrapped their trips, he said.

"We are clearly going to lose some of our speakers who have had the most experience, and that would deprive the learning from going forward," said Dr. Magill, also the director for malaria at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Global Health Program.

Decision-making style here can only be a source of envy for our own aspiring dear leaders.

But, just in case there were any call for a little perspective, here's some from Charles Pierce—

As long as there have been human beings, there has been epidemic disease. As long as there has been epidemic disease, there has been panic. As long as there has been panic, there have been heroes who stand in the middle of it, heedless of the blind terror, and beat it back through the sheer force of their humanity.

And as long as there have been human beings, there have been human beings with power over other human beings. As long as there have been human beings with power over other human beings, there have been governments. And as long as there has been epidemic disease, and as long as there has been panic, there have been human beings who have the right combination of rancid ambition and foul cowardice who come into the government and seek advantage from the panic and, therefore, from the epidemic disease itself. There have always been human beings who are heroes in the face of epidemic disease. And there have always been slaves to their own worst instincts.

Which is where Chris Christie and Andrew Cuomo come in, along with the right-wing noise machine fueling this panic, aided and abetted our craven media—

CNN can't help itself because it already has fired up the logo and the doomy music. Sorry, Malaysian Airlines 370. You're on your own now, wherever you are.

That's infinitely more profitable than promoting reality, which can be summarized—

Another North-South Divide

Digby's tale of two captions—

Pierce—

I am now in my fourth hour of watching the CBC's coverage of the shooting at the Canadian parliament today. There has been virtually no mention of Islamic fundamentalism, or ISIL, or ISIS, or any other of the popular bogeymen. Moreover, the only casual reference to any of that came from a CBC reporter who was reporting from outside the White House, and the only hint of a political reaction to come is some confusion as to whether Canada had been placed on heightened alert some time last week. (They don't use the phrase "terror threat," and the reporters are quick to point out that official talk about "chatter" can mean anything at all.) Nobody in parliament has blamed Stephen Harper or leaped to a microphone to yell about closing Canada's borders. The coverage has been calm, judicious, and remarkably intelligent.

It's an enviable reaction—at the moment. Perhaps it will hold against Harper's likely moves to make the place more Homeland-y.

Meanwhile, south of the border: crisis over. Can't be long before our media are on to the next panic to be stoked.

Fear Mongering, 101

On the bus weekday mornings, I chat with a woman going to the same destination. She's a medical research scientist, and last Wednesday she began bringing up the subject of Ebola. Immunology is not her field, and it wasn't as a medical topic that it was on her mind: of course it was the sudden prominence in US media of the West African epidemic prompting this.

Next morning, same topic. I had to say that that, so far in this country, one caregiver has gotten sick, after her hospital's mismanagement of an infected patient. As serious a concern as epidemic prevention is, the US numbers don't warrant the public's level of fear. And that fear is thanks to the same media that won't look at an ongoing public health issue like the staggering number of gun deaths.

My seatmate agreed—then reminded me her son has been traveling to medical school interviews, and she's concerned about his going through airports. It's an understandable reaction, and I hoped I hadn't sounded harsh.

Still, it's depressing how fast and effective the fear mongering is, and how it works just as well on people who might be expected to stop, think, and remember some facts.

At least my fellow bus rider was able to see some context beyond the headlines. Most of our fellow 'Murkans aren't likely to be exposed to facts, certainly not when those only get in the way of a politically profitable panic.

Steve M. makes a noble effort to clue in the media—

I know that, by now, much of America probably thinks that "we don't really know" what the incubation period is, just as they think "we don't really know" how Ebola is transmitted. But no matter what they think, they need to be reminded that there are no non-medical personnel who've contracted Ebola via Thomas Eric Duncan. Not his relatives. Not his fiancee. Not the people at the apartment complex where he was staying. ...
...
... I have to think that some people would understand if they were reminded that the disease is being transmitted pretty much exactly the way the authorities have always thought it's transmitted, and isn't being transmitted ambiently, just as the experts told us.

Ebola was discovered in 1976. Do most Americans know that -- know that scientists have had 38 years to figure out what it does? Could the press please remind the public of the fact that this virus hasn't been a mystery to scientists for decades?

The Dallas hospital grossly mishandled the first US victim's condition. Yves Smith quotes the BBC—

This is a crude, and damning, statistic but so far Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) has treated thousands of people in West Africa with Ebola, and has seen 16 medical workers contract the disease. This hospital in Dallas has treated just one patient, and has two sick healthcare staff.

Smith's post introduces an article by Roy Poses, MD, which "goes into considerable, damning detail about the considerable mismanagement of Duncan's case and how it demonstrates how short-sighted it is to have MBAs run hospitals. These details have become public despite a gag order having apparently been put in place on the staff of the hospital that treated the first patient, hospital, Texas Health Presbyterian. Imagine what we don't yet know."

Poses oulines the predictable results of cost-cutting: Duncan's being left alone, but in an area where others were exposed; management resistance to placing him in an isolation unit, despite a nurse supervisor's insistence; lab samples sent through normal procedures, possibly contaminating the hospital's entire tube system.

Despite hospital gag orders against nurses, some brave ones got the story out—via some unionized sisters. One nurse also spoke directly.

And a week ago, Roy Edroso calling "...War on Science, Only Dumber"—

National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins, probably annoyed that Republicans who couldn't give two shits about medical research are whooping up Ebola like it's an STD Obama is giving to white women, came out and said that budget cuts to the NIH have adversely impacted their development of a vaccine.

Holding Sandwich While Black

Killed by St. Louis police: a black teenager, armed with a sandwich.

Protests continue in St. Louis and Ferguson; Cornel West among those arrested.